We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path. My heart yearned, as I beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his steps. What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked. But no, he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the while, like a sick dog. Presently he got to his feet again, protesting he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I saw in his changed countenance, the first approaches of death. ‘Master,’ said I, ‘you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me with dread. Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that we seek.’ ‘Wench,’ he cried, ‘look before you; look at your steps. I declare to Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you of the change in your position.’ A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a whisper, that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent, vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once again I paused and looked back at my companion, with a horror in my eyes. ‘The coffin snake,’ said I, ‘the snake that dogs its victim like a hound.’ But he was not to be dissuaded. ‘I am an old traveller,’ said he. ‘This is a foul jungle indeed; but we shall soon be at an end.’ ‘Ay,’ said I, looking at him, with a strange smile, ‘what end?’ Thereupon he laughed again and again, but not very heartily; and then, perceiving that the path began to widen and grow higher, ‘There!’ said he. ‘What did I tell you? We are past the worst.’ Indeed, we had now come to the bayou, which was in that place very narrow and bridged across by a fallen trunk; but on either hand we could see it broaden out, under a cavern of great arms of trees and hanging creepers: sluggish, putrid, of a horrible and sickly stench, floated on by the flat heads of alligators, and its banks alive with scarlet crabs. ‘If we fall from that unsteady bridge,’ said I, ‘see, where the caiman lies ready to devour us! If, by the least divergence from the path, we should be snared in a morass, see, where those myriads of scarlet vermin scour the border of the thicket! Once helpless, how they would swarm together to the assault! What could man do against a thousand of such mailed assailants? And what a death were that, to perish alive under their claws.’ ‘Are you mad, girl?’ he cried. ‘I bid you be silent and lead on.’ Again I looked upon him, half relenting; and at that he raised the stick that was in his hand and cruelly struck me on the face. ‘Lead on!’ he cried again. ‘Must I be all day, catching my death in this vile slough, and all for a prating slave-girl?’